Torsade Literary Space A Little Joy (poem)
A Little Joy
The young gather near old Timeworn
The age of him lies like a bundle
Poor yellow tom
The stink of an open toilet and the menace of a grinning man
He knows they’re like that
A little joy in the killing
The back steps concrete crumbling
This fault they’d ticked
This needed no entering
No speaking
and Timeworn
Yellow tape once pulled away
Found the humans put up treated wood
Hot, green, arsenical in the hot sun
His fur so matted, under him
The step precipitating
He will lick this moisture welled there
Nursed in his own protein and bone
Malnutrition yearning
But life is daily waking up and breathing
Heat suspending him in ease is lulling
A child sent outdoors who hopes to run upstairs
Hide her head from the bully’s missile
Where the shadow falls
Dark and only her shoes are white
With a fingernail she picks a flea
From his whisker and the old cat lifts
His chin, purring
A Little Joy
Field Marks
(2017, Stephanie Foster)